Apologies to Musical Lovers - Can't Stand Grease & SNF!!! (1 Viewer)

[Dome Vongvises]

I believe and understand everybody is entitled to their opinion. What I don't believe and understand is people apologizing for them.

I like Grease, and I haven't seen SNF, but I can understand where Lou is coming from.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Different strokes for Different Folks! By the way, I think Saturday Night Fever is a great film, but I never cared for Grease.




Crawdaddy

 

[Holadem]

I believe and understand everybody is entitled to their opinion. What I don't believe and understand is people apologizing for them.

Had he not done that, he would have been torn apart for daring to express them without an in-depth analysis.

--
Holadem

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Hold em' said:

Had he not done that, he would have been torn apart for daring to express them without an in-depth analysis.

There's a difference between making an opinion and supporting it and apologizing for one, but I can concede the fact that the differenct is pretty hair thin.

 

[Stacie]

I love musicals, but I've never really liked Grease, aside from Stockard Channing's scenes. SNF (not a musical) is an okay film -- I can appreciate the good things in it, but it's ultimately just way too much of a downer for me.

(N.B. I like, even love, many films with ambivalent or unhappy endings -- but there's just something about SNF that makes it an extremely unpleasant viewing experience for me, though, like I said, I can see why people like it.)

Stacie

 

[Christopher P]

I don't like these movies either, and always thought I was in the very small minority.


Sidenote: I like disco, it is great to dance to, and can be a nice break from techno and other types of music that can get repetitive.

Chris

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Yeah I started this thread because I didn't want to thread fart elsewhere.

Actually I don't mind Travolta at all. It's disco I really can't stand and SNF brought a wave of that music to the radio that lasted for several years.

I also believe that musicals or movies that feature a lot of singing, dancing or songs are treated differently critically.

If a movie has great music but other aspects are weak it still can get good reviews.

Any other type of movie is judged on all aspects equally.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

If a movie has great music but other aspects are weak it still can get good reviews.

You mean like A Hard Day's Night?
~Edwin

 

[Lou Sytsma]

You mean like A Hard Day's Night?

Yep

 

[Lou Sytsma]

OTOH - Yellow Submarine is a very good movie.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Compared to Saturday Night Fever, in my view, A Hard Day's Night is nothing more than a fluff piece.
With SNF's release on DVD this week, this was going to be the next film profiled under my Film Greats series as I consider this an excellent film as well. You have now saved me a lot of writeup time.
~Edwin

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Hey Edwin - what can I say! You are most welcome.

 

[Tino]

As someone said earlier, for a truly great, unique musical, try Lars Von Trier's Dancer In The Dark starring Bjork.
One of the most original "musicals" ever made!
Btw, I like both Grease and SNF.

 

[DeeF]

But back to the DVD...

I think SNF is OK. But the commentary by John Badham is the best ever for a DVD! It's hilarious, and amazingly insightful. It will make you like the film more than you did before.

The mistake made by the music industry about disco, was that disco was never meant to be listened to as music, on the radio. It's dance music, meant to be danced to. It should have existed simultaneously with more concert-friendly rock music (and other kinds of music), but the record companies starting insisting that their big rock acts like The Stones and Rod Stewart record in a "disco" style. Which really is kind of ridiculous. No wonder people boycotted disco -- because they weren't getting anything else, at the time.

The BeeGees did a great job of making dance songs with terrific melodies.

By the way, the soundtrack has been re-mixed for the DVD and it sounds unbelievable! My surround-sound system never sounded so alive.

I'm not very fond of Grease -- either the movie or the DVD. It has some terrific moments, but it doesn't add up as either a plausible story or a great fantasy a la Singin' in the Rain. It's just a pleasant diversion (and John Travolta is remarkably similar in both films -- lack of acting talent, maybe?)

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Michael St. Clair wrote

Quote:

Wrong. The "wave" was already here (USA) years before Saturday Night Fever came upon the scene. Hollywood then, as always, follows the trends. It does not set them. Saturday Night Fever did, unfortunately, give us the screechy HeeBee GeeBees, and their equally untalented younger Gib Sib, Andy, for several years to come.

 

[Jason Boucher]

Disco sucks, we can all agree. But look at SNF in an historical perspective. It really predated what we all know as disco. Think of it as a profile of an emerging underground scene for disaffected youth. I am intrigued by the pop culture historians who trumpet disco as the epoch of cultural acceptance. I have heard disco described as a movement where all races, cultures, and sexual orientations coexisted in harmony on the dance floor--kind of the 60's dream realized (particularly in the Studio 54 films, documentaries). But in SNF, the characters are misogynists, explicitly rascist, stick to their own, and taunt gays. Where's the love? Supposedly the Detroit "Disco Sucks" rally represented the revenge of the heterosexual white male, but how do the post-disco headbangers, or the current Eminem hip-hoppers really differ from Tony and his crew ("The Faces"). Disco, a 1977 subculture for these youth, was hijacked by the rich and famous beautiful people. SNF shows that class envy, prejudice and rascism really is born of socio-economic factors as maturing youth face a seemingly hopeless future, in whatever the setting. Don't view it as a disco movie (or a musical for that matter). View it as disturbing social commentary.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

"Thank God It's Friday" is a much better disco movie than SNF- it's a lot more light-hearted and fun.
I think Grease is very overrated, but I ended up buying it anyway. My biggest problem is the people playing high school kids look about 40!

 

[andrew markworthy]

So you like THE WIZARD OF OZ (Judy Garland singing) but you hate GREASE (Olivia Newton John singing). OK...well, good for you

Am I the only one to notice that Judy Garland sings ever-so-slightly flat?

Anyway, back on topic. I don't think it's fair to say that Grease is bad - more accurately, it's good at what it does, but what it does isn't to everybody's taste. This is fine, but I'm unsure it's worth beefing about.

I'd personally be happy to see every Sondheim 'musical' lost forever, even though there are those who think several hours in the theatre with no hummable tunes coupled with bowel-shrivelling pretension is the height of sophistication. But equally, I wouldn't attack a release of 'Sunday in the Park With George' just because I'd prefer root canal work to watching it.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I have the strange feeling Grease is going to haunt me for a long, long time.

 

[RobertR]

I've never liked John Travolta, and I never cared much for disco, along with the bad clothing styles of the era. And I can't stand the BeeGees "nails on the chalkboard" style of singing. That makes SNF a triple threat for me.

I may watch it someday as a sociological study if someone can assure me that the heinously excrecable bastardization A Fifth of Beethoven isn't in the movie.